next day, and
gave no opportunity for Mr. Casaubon to show disapprobation. On the
contrary it seemed to Dorothea that Will had a happier way of drawing
her husband into conversation and of deferentially listening to him
than she had ever observed in any one before. To be sure, the
listeners about Tipton were not highly gifted! Will talked a good deal
himself, but what he said was thrown in with such rapidity, and with
such an unimportant air of saying something by the way, that it seemed
a gay little chime after the great bell. If Will was not always
perfect, this was certainly one of his good days. He described touches
of incident among the poor people in Rome, only to be seen by one who
could move about freely; he found himself in agreement with Mr.
Casaubon as to the unsound opinions of Middleton concerning the
relations of Judaism and Catholicism; and passed easily to a
half-enthusiastic half-playful picture of the enjoyment he got out of
the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the mind flexible with
constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world's ages as a
set of box-like partitions without vital connection. Mr. Casaubon's
studies, Will observed, had always been of too broad a kind for that,
and he had perhaps never felt any such sudden effect, but for himself
he confessed that Rome had given him quite a new sense of history as a
whole: the fragments stimulated his imagination and made him
constructive. Then occasionally, but not too often, he appealed to
Dorothea, and discussed what she said, as if her sentiment were an item
to be considered in the final judgment even of the Madonna di Foligno
or the Laocoon. A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion
makes conversation particularly cheerful; and Mr. Casaubon too was not
without his pride in his young wife, who spoke better than most women,
as indeed he had perceived in choosing her.

Since things were going on so pleasantly, Mr. Casaubon's statement that
his labors in the Library would be suspended for a couple of days, and
that after a brief renewal he should have no further reason for staying
in Rome, encouraged Will to urge that Mrs. Casaubon should not go away
without seeing a studio or two. Would not Mr. Casaubon take her? That
sort of thing ought not to be missed: it was quite special: it was a
form of life that grew like a small fresh vegetation with its
population of insects on huge fossils. Will would be happy to co